Search results for ""Author Paul Garson""

No other combatant nation employed motorcycles on the scale produced by the Third Reich. During Nazi Germany’s campaigns, first of invasion, then of the retreat that followed, motorcycles served a variety of functions: as couriers, for reconnaissance, for medical evacuation, as assault shock troops taking the brunt of battle, even as tank destroyers and for delivering hot meals to the frontline. As the Third Reich gained absolute control of Germany and sought to spread its domain by fire and steel, some 300 different brands of motorcycles had been in production, yet only a select few were chosen to join the Wehrmacht in its war of conquest. Among the motorcycles were the vaunted BMW, as well as NSU, Zündapp and the now lesser known yet ‘bullet tough’ DKW, among several others, either domestically produced or confiscated from occupied territories. As with all motorcyclists, there was a kinship among the soldiers on two (or three) wheels who called themselves Kradmelder (despatch riders). Two-Wheeled Blitzkrieg shares the uniquely personal, largely unpublished images they took of themselves and their machines as they entered the crucible of war.

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From birth, Nazi propaganda bombarded children with images romanticising war and a glorious death for the Fuehrer and Fatherland. Third Reich social planners emphasised physical activity over the intellect, all toward ensuring absolute loyalty to the Fuehrer and to Nazi ideology, ultimately in preparation for military service. Well over 3 million boys and girls were involved in organisations such as the Hitler Youth. Evidence of the intensity of the indoctrination programme can be seen in the use of some 200,000 special trains required to transport 5 million German youth to the 12,000 HJ camps during the reign of the Third Reich. With an incredible selection of photographs, most of which are previously unpublished, Paul Garson offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of children of the Third Reich.

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The photographs in this startling collection were taken by German soldiers and civilians during the Third Reich; a few were taken by professionals embedded with the troops. But for the most part, they are the work of amateurs taking snapshots for family and friends.Through these black and white images, we enter the living rooms, the back yards, the boulevards and the killing fields of Nazi Germany. Many of these photos were once in family albums. Some soldiers returned with them after the war and, years later, these photographs were offered for sale by relatives along with their own snapshots of the home front. Other pictures were captured by the Soviets and, after the fall of the USSR, became available on the open market.The author acquired these snapshots from some fifteen countries; he spent more than four years researching, working every day, reviewing more than 100,000 images and selecting nearly 400 for this book. 'Most images,' the author says, 'are accompanied by text that both complements historical research and offers a subjective analysis of each - all in an effort to comprehend, to somehow attempt to understand what is essentially unfathomable.'

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Of the millions of German soldiers who went to war, many were armed with their personal cameras and intent on photographically chronicling their Dienstzeit, or military service, via meticulously prepared albums or by turning their photos into postcards sent to family and friends or as a single photo to carry into battle. Others were professional photographers and film makers recruited by the military and the Nazi State propaganda ministry to produce images for their agendas. In the era before television, the video camera and satellite link-ups, no other group of combatants had documented a war with such a volume of images. The cameras included older 127 and 120 film formats as well as the new 35 mm still cameras and even 8- and 16-mm movie cameras, which at times the soldaten aimed with the same accuracy as their Mauser rifles and Krupp cannon. In turn the images reflect upon the photographers, a mirrored view of a mind-set clouded by a fatal arrogance, the eye of the beholder blinded by a cruel and rapacious ideology as yet unaware that such images would serve to document those darkest of times.

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Heldentod - The Nazi Culture of Death graphically focuses on the Third Reich's conception and promotion of the "Hero's Death" as it fostered and then fuelled a cataclysm of apocalyptic carnage and destruction. This underlying driving force, ultimately self-destructive, is shown infusing both State sponsored propaganda and echoed by the personal battlefield images captured by its soldiers' personal cameras. In so doing it confronts the matter of subject vs. observer and their intimate connection. The original, often one-of-a-kind and never before seen photos also serve as a searing documentation of man's inhumanity to man and a stark warning to future generations.

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